COLUMBUS: Ohio State has announced that two players will no longer play for the Buckeyes, one because of injury and another who wishes to play closer to his home in Colorado.

Sophomore linebacker Conner Crowell, from Waldorf, Md., has decided to give up football. He has had two surgeries while at Ohio State for an injury that occurred while he was in high school. Ohio State medical staff had not cleared him to play.

Freshman offensive lineman Joey O'Connor, from Windsor, Colo., requested a transfer to play closer to home. He was redshirted last fall as the Buckeyes went 12-0 under first-year coach Urban Meyer.

COLUMBUS: Ohio State coach Thad Matta has agreed to a revised contract which will give him a 10 percent increase to more than $3.2 million annually and includes academic bonuses and more stringent wording about NCAA violations.

With years he had already earned through job performance, the five-time Big Ten champion coach will be under contract through July 2019.

Rivals rates Mitchell as a five-star prospect. The others are all considered four-star players.

Whiles most of the players in the top 100 are committed, there are 17 who haven't picked a school. Ohio State is after Georgia safety Vonn Bell, who visited the school on Jan. 11. The Buckeyes are battling Alabama and Tennessee for Bell.

Burrows, Lisle and Marshall are the only three Ohio players in the top 100.

COLUMBUS: Michigan State coach Tom Izzo knows that to stop Deshaun Thomas is the surest way to stop No. 11 Ohio State.

"Thomas is shooting the lights out. He's been really effective," Izzo said during preparations for his 18th-ranked Spartans' home game against the Buckeyes on Saturday night. "We've got to contain Thomas."

The thing is, no one really has been able to do that all season.

The 6-foot-7 junior leads the Big Ten in scoring (by more than two full points) at 20.3 points a game. He hasn't been held below 14 points all season, and he's been between 16 and 24 points in each of his last 10 games.

What's more, he actually likes it when opposing teams key on him, double-team him or throw some junk defense at him.

Before Chip Kelly was even introduced as head coach of the Philadelphia Eagles, Ohio State was after two of his commits at Oregon.

According to Brad Bournival of ESPN's BuckeyeNation, twin brothers Tyree and Tyrell Robinson will be visiting Columbus next week. Both were offered scholarships by Ohio State despite being committed to Oregon.

But as Tyree Robinson told Rivals.com that Notre Dame and Southern California are the two schools "I really have in mind right now, but there will be others."

COLUMBUS: Urban Meyer says one of the mantras for his second Ohio State team will be "truth."

He's certainly not sparing his Buckeyes his perception of it when it comes to whether they can compete with the likes of national champion Alabama next season.

"For me to say we have to get there next year, that's like me talking about we have to go fly to the moon," he said Friday. "We're nowhere near even having that conversation."

Despite a 12-0 record and a No. 3 ranking in the Associated Press poll after a bowl-less season, Meyer made it clear he does not believe his team is remotely close to even discussing competing with the nation's elite teams.

"Truth means exactly (that); you have a good season, and there's a lot of conversation about things that really shouldn't be discussed because it's not true," he said, referring to extremely early predictions that figure the Buckeyes to be among the top handful of teams in the nation in 2013. "For example, are you guys going to (contend for the national title) next year? No, probably not, unless we get a lot better — like, a lot better."

COLUMBUS: Ohio State says running back Jordan Hall has been granted a medical redshirt after missing most of the 2012 season due to foot and knee injuries.

Hall carried the ball in just three games last season as a senior, totaling 40 attempts for 218 yards and a touchdown. He missed the start of the season after cutting his foot in the summer and the end after partially tearing a knee ligament.